Crafty Adventure Series: Personal Development (+ Giveaway)

Hello friends! As promised, I am finally going to introduce you to my Crafty Adventure Series. No, this isn’t a novel. 🙂 This will be a long post but the rest of the series will be shorter!

I have been jotting ideas for this for weeks, but excuses got in the way of me posting on my blog. Although you can find plenty of information elsewhere about what some of the best craft products are, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t share some of my favorites. The series will feature different categories of products that I find myself using the most and why they are my favorites. What will make it different from other people’s series is that I will share my personal discoveries and discuss more than just crafting. Each post will be added to Links so that you can have an easier time finding what you need. You can also use the Search option in the sidebar and search terms like “crafty adventure” or “favorite products” and related posts will show up!

My first part to the series will focus on Personal Development because it’s the most important investment in our lives. And I want to finally talk about my One Little Word.

You’re already aware that the start of a new year motivates people to set big goals, but within a few weeks, they fall back into old habits. In reality, you don’t really need to start at a specific time. You can start now. That’s one reason I wasn’t worried about needing to write about my One Little Word during the first week of the new year. In fact, I don’t necessarily have to share about it either. I’m choosing to because I realize that my experiences actually help people. If I leave a positive impact for only one person, then that’s enough for me. Even if no one cares what I have to say, I want to get comfortable with expressing myself on a public platform (one of my struggles).

My One Little Word for 2016 is CONNECT.

One word is hard to pick, but having one word helps to me focus and improve in multiple areas. A few years ago I took a self-development course and one of the exercises asked us to choose three words that best described our ideal self. I picked joyful, powerful, and trusting. That being said, improving my connections can help me to improve the joy I experience, empower me, and help me to trust others more. All the words in the background of the image are words I liked, but I’m not going to pick too many because I already know how easily overwhelmed I get.

I am hoping to connect with myself more, and, in turn, connect more with others. It’ll help me to slow down, be patient, increase tolerance for discomforting feelings, and prioritize what matters. Connecting will help me to constantly renew my intentions so that what I do and say will align more with my values. For most of my life, I have struggled with depression and balancing my life. In my crafty adventure, I met so many other people who experience similar things. I just want you to know that if I can do it, so can you! Whatever I learn, I want to be able to share it with others so they can feel inspired and motivated. I love when people are honest about their struggles, mistakes, and failures because it helps you to connect more easily with that person. That person is more real. If all you talk about are your successes, people will feel inadequate or ill-equipped to reach similar goals.

Looking inside ourselves is not an easy task. Being an introvert, I do it all the time. That doesn’t mean I do everything right or have everything in my life figured out. There have been years when I invested more in my self-development and have seen positive results. Having a good relationship with yourself can help you to have good relationships with other people. In the past few weeks, I’ve been using a few tools to help me get organized, set major goals, and to prioritize things that matter.

If you want to set and accomplish creative business goals, then this book is for you. Crafting started as an accidental hobby for me, but during my crafty adventure, I realized I wanted to do so much more as I explored my inner creative. How was I going to accomplish my goals when I was easily distracted and overwhelmed? For months, I tried to use a planner and start a routine. Since there was no urgency except when I had to post for Design Teams, I let everything else slide. Now that I’m working, I’ve slowly established a routine. I try to be as productive as possible with my free time because there’s so little of it now.

Lisa offers the first chapter for free on her website if you want to try it out. You can also purchase the digital version (PDF file) on her site for $12.50. I prefer printed books so I bought mine from Amazon (linked in sidebar and below). The book helps you to look at your habits so you can have a better understanding what works for you and what doesn’t work. There are countless worksheets and prompts in the book. I work on one to three exercises each day and already can see what wasn’t working for me last year. I highly recommend this book for people at all levels.

This is pretty self-explanatory. As a social worker, I have learned that investing in self-care will prevent burnout in the demanding field. Some things are common sense, but I am always open to learning new and better ways to practice self-care. This planner is only $10 and helps you to do something for yourself every single day. When I share my Level 10 Life in my next post, you’ll see that this is probably the area in my life that I do pretty well in. 🙂

This book is amazing. Hal encourages you to spend some time with yourself every morning engaging in a few activities that will lead to more productive and energetic days. I engage in some of these activities daily, but I am working on the waking-up early part. Since my jobs start later in the day, I haven’t had to worry about what time in the morning I have to get up for it.

I am a writer, but I struggle with writing. I’ve been following Blessing Manifesting for years and love her approach in life. She shares amazing positive words on her pages, and Journey Through Journaling is another great option to help with exploring yourself. You can find plenty of journaling prompts online for free, but Dominee sends you a weekly e-mail with a journaling prompt.

I did purchase these in a pre-order but don’t expect to receive them for another week or two. From what I’ve heard from top creative folks, these sheets are great. They are for either personal and/or business goals and help you with setting purposeful goals over a six month span (any six months). I will actually use this for spirituality purposes.

I haven’t tried this yet because I think I have enough workbooks to try 🙂 But I’ve heard really great things about them. There are workbooks for personal and business goals. Leonie includes her own personal drawings and doodles so it’s adorable.

8. Tools4Wisdom and TheInnerGuide

I saw these two planners on Amazon and think they are good alternatives if you want to incorporate your goal-setting with your daily/weekly/monthly planning (I use mine separately).

January is coming to an end and I already feel really productive. I’m more confident, less distracted, and less overwhelmed. There is so much to look forward to!! Since I have worked on connecting with myself, my next step is to connect more with my loved ones. These are the people who have been really supportive of what I do, whether it’s professionally or creatively, and I hope they know I appreciate that a lot.

There will be at least twelve parts to this series. I will post every few days so there’s enough time for everyone to read, and each day will have its own giveaway!! Due to my busy schedule, I will pick all winners at the end of February and ship prizes first week of March.

GIVEAWAY #1:To qualify, answer the following question: What’s one thing you do for personal development?For more entries, share the post and let me know where you shared it. For even more entries, connect with me (leave a separate comment for each):

Commenting ends Saturday, February 27 at 11:59 pm EST. All winners will be contacted via e-mail, and I will also post the list on my blog by Saturday, March 5.

I will be giving away a Foxy Fix Natural Brown Cover in Wide with one insert. You can see more products by Foxy Fix here to see its use. It’s a gorgeous leather cover for notebooks. 🙂

I would love to hear your feedback for this post. 🙂 Don’t worry, I will have mostly craft-related topics but wanted to get a few general ones out of the way. If you have any tips or ideas, feel free to share in the comments or send me a message! Thank you for visiting! ♡

This post contains a few affiliate links, which essentially means that if you happen to purchase something, I get a small commission (at no additional cost to you!) as a way to support my blogging endeavors. Thanks in advance for your support!